Whatever will be will be.

When the Devil Makes You Examine Your Non-Belief

Over a decade ago now, in an attempt to rescue my floundering faith, I set about reading the Bible cover to cover. Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, the last vestiges of that faith left during the book of Exodus, when Pharaoh, overwhelmed by the plagues repeatedly repents, only for God to harden his heart each time until at last the Egyptians lose their firstborn children and livestock, just so God’s power is made known.

We’re taught that story in Sunday school, I’d known it for years. But even though I kept reading after that, I knew then that I no longer believed. And at the time, it made me terribly sad, but like I said, that was over a decade ago. I now consider myself an agnostic atheist. I don’t believe that there’s a god, but I also realize that I cannot know that as a matter of fact.

There’s a show currently airing on Fox called Lucifer that’s loosely based on a comic book, in which the devil takes a break from ruling hell and vacations in Los Angeles, cause where else would he go than the city of angels? The show is part cop procedural, part supernatural and never really takes itself too seriously even while dealing with religious themes.

I love it.

So I think that’s why I felt sucker punched during this Monday’s episode when Lucifer delivers a glorious rant towards God, questioning that divine plan that many believers hold onto, and how everyone seems to come out on the losing end. I was instantly transported back to my reading of Exodus, wondering how I was supposed to hold onto faith when God brought upon the slaughter of the firstborn children even after Pharaoh was willing to relent of his own volition.

I imagine that people who were never religious to begin with might not have felt so strongly about it, and well, there’s a group of people who are religious trying to boycott it off the air, but for a non-believer who once believed, I knew that beautifully melancholic feeling.

So there’s a certain irony to the fact that a comic book show about the devil managed what a couple dozen Christian movies have failed to do; made me think about faith.